DAGMARA GENDA

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PARK WILDLIFE PORTRAITS

Blending appropriated imagery from nature photographs, coffee table books, calendars, and travel brochures with original drawn and painted elements, Dagmara Genda's Panorama and Park Wildlife Portraits address clichés of the Canadian landscape. The work is formed using the logic of a jigsaw puzzle: found forms are traced, cut, combined, and recombined until they fit together. The final collages present a new version of natural space and question the highly constructed legacy of The Group of Seven in relation to both our sense of national identity and prevailing foreign stereotypes.

This is a series of portraits of animals sourced from the larger panoramic drawing. The drawings, in vertical format, draw on the traditional and highly constructed conventions of portraiture. Each depicts one animal that is transformed, and often anthropomorphized, into a fantastical hybrid of other animals, humans, and technology. The collages are tumultuous, humorous, absurd, and sometimes perverse, and highlight that corruption is, in fact, a natural state.

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